Contents

"Part One: Hollywood Realities" is a collection of essays on various subjects ranging from movie stars and studio executives to his thoughts on how to begin and end a screenplay and how to write for a movie star.

Perhaps the most famous quotation from the book. It is one of his two "Roman numeral I's" and is repeated throughout the book. Now widely quoted, it is often inaccurately used to suggest that Hollywood executives are stupid, but in fact refers to Goldman's belief that, prior to a movie's release, Hollywood has no real idea how well a film will do.

In the late 1970s, William Goldman did hours of interviews with John Brady for a book that became The Craft of the Screenwriter (1981). Some of Goldman's answers were edited into a magazine piece for Esquire, which was read by an editor at a publishing house who contacted Goldman about writing a book on screenwriting. Goldman agreed and hired Brady to work on the book with him, getting Brady to interview him over several sessions. These conversations were taped and transcribed, which Goldman used as the basis for the book.[1]